Political Humor

The world, objectively, has been at an absolute high water mark for peace. The conflicts that happen are nowhere as sweeping or brutal as the historical norm.

Uh... welcome to globalization and industrialization? Industrial with strong global trade tend to be more war-averse; this has nothing to do with the so-called Pax Americana.

If you told someone in the late 1800s that the need to control Puerto Rico and Hawaii as naval bases would lead to needing 128 foreign military bases worldwide in a little over a century they wouldn't believe you.

It would, in fact, have been pretty believable. Also, you know, manifest destiny. America has been a land and money-hungry empire from the very beginning.

Only "nothing but good" if you think self determination infinitely outweighs the violent political turmoil and instability of the power vacuum.

Which it does. The violent turmoil is of course bad, but it can (and in many places, did) get better. The state of backwards stagnation enforced by European colonizers wasn't much better, if at all. Living in a state of debased slavery to foreign powers with no right to even hope for a better future was worse than any war, which is why many former colonies in fact violently liberated themselves. And that's before you get into violent atrocities. The people involved all seem to have preferred war over a deeply unjust peace.

Not to mention many of those subjugated people came out the other side still under the thumb of the new American/Soviet influence.

Which was far less intrusive than the European version, so it was an improvement.

Wait, are we talking about the same Western Roman collapse where basically all measures indicate a precipitous drop in quality of life for the average person in Europe?

The Western Roman collapse where measures indicated that kids finally started getting enough to eat, yes.

Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire. Tainter's view is supported by later studies which indicate that European men in the medieval period were taller than those of the Roman Empire. Average stature is a good indicator of nutrition and health.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire

We're also talking about an unexplored era of major conflicts with nuclear powers. Things might "end" a little more emphatically than we want.

Nuclear powers can manage (and for the most part are managing) their own business.

Depends on the alternative.

Well you have no idea, that's the whole point. If you were an Indian whose country had been turned into one massive scale plantation, and whose only choice seemed to be independence or a continuation of that state of economic slavery, would you have chosen independence or not?